A Peaceful Penthouse That Turmoil Calls Home

The penthouse at 37 Riverside Drive in Manhattan was Robert A. and Kathleen Durst's before Mrs. Durst disappeared in 1982.Credit
Raymond McCrea Jones/The New York Times

The western penthouse at 37 Riverside Drive soars above the park and the Hudson River, offering sweeping sunset views across the Palisades and past the George Washington Bridge, conjuring a feeling of country in the city and respite from the hubbub of Manhattan far below.

But for all that it seems like a place of peace, over the decades it has been anything but.

Perched atop a graceful neo-Georgian building, it was once the home of Robert A. Durst and his wife, Kathleen, until her disappearance in 1982, a vanishing in which Mr. Durst, a troubled scion of the prominent real estate family, was suspected of playing a role but never charged. Investigators questioned residents and employees at the building in their efforts to find Mrs. Durst, a medical student who, according to news reports, had last been seen by the superintendent as she left on the morning of Feb. 1.

Mrs. Durst was never found, and the police never determined what had happened. After her disappearance, Mr. Durst gutted the apartment, but he did not finish the renovation and came under pressure from the co-op board to sell about a year later. Another resident, Joel S. Goor, then president of the co-op board and the rabbi of the Metropolitan Synagogue of New York on Park Avenue, bought the apartment. He undertook his own renovation — he would not disclose how much he paid for the apartment, but told The New York Times in 2004 that he spent more than $500,000 on the purchase and alterations — but he did not stay permanently. He put it on the market for $3.57 million, citing divorce as his reason for selling.

Enter Robert and Champa Weinreb, who bought the apartment in 2005 for $2.75 million, according to property records. They, too, had a reconstruction in mind, with plans to demolish and rebuild the place — a teardown in the sky.

But after six years of hiring experts, submitting and resubmitting plans and seeking approvals, the couple, who declined to comment for this article, have been unable to bring their vision to fruition because the board has rejected their proposals. So now the apartment is at the heart of a new conflict that could have repercussions for frustrated co-op owners throughout the city: a lawsuit against the board that is working its way through State Supreme Court.

At the center of the dispute is whether the board, in rejecting the Weinrebs’ plans and raising new objections over the years despite the approvals of its own experts, acted in bad faith and unreasonably stymied the construction. That has yet to be determined. But in bringing the lawsuit, the Weinrebs went after not just the corporation, but also several of the board members directly. Justice Carol R. Edmead dismissed that element of the suit this month, deciding that the Weinrebs had failed to prove that the board members had acted outside their official capacity in denying them the right to proceed.

All of the board’s denials of the plans were “made by the board members by a vote, and thus, were made in their official capacities,” Justice Edmead wrote.

Photo

Sections of wall and ceiling had to be removed to find support beams.Credit
Raymond McCrea Jones/The New York Times

“There is simply no allegation of any conduct specific to any particular individual defendant in their individual capacities,” she continued.

The suit can proceed against the corporation, Justice Edmead found, but not its individual representatives, a decision that strengthens a ruling in 2009 that expanded the protections for members of co-op and condominium boards. That ruling held that to be successful, a plaintiff must show that each member committed some grievous act, like discrimination or extortion, outside their roles as board members.

Steven D. Sladkus, the co-op’s lawyer, said, “The courts are saying you can’t just willy-nilly sue board members individually because you don’t like the decisions they make.”

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In this case, part of what has created the conflict is the sheer size of the construction plans, which started out with the addition of a second story and became a one-floor apartment with its own gas-fired heating system — the Weinrebs maintain that the existing heat and water were inadequate — that would incorporate parts of the roof and terrace. According to court papers, the Weinrebs say that they met with several members of the board to review their plan before the purchase and that they were assured the board would “give prompt and positive consideration” to them. They bought in September 2005 and then began the lengthy process of securing permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Landmarks approved the plan in early 2007, at which point the couple say they submitted full renovation plans to the board, which hired, at the Weinrebs’ expense, experts to review them. Over the next four years, the board rejected versions of the plans at least three times — continually raising new objections, according to the Weinrebs — although the experts, including an owners’ representative, had signed off on them. Among their concerns was a plan to move supports for the building’s water tower and to run a new gas line to the apartment to fuel an independent radiant heating system for the apartment.

In addition, the Weinrebs charged, the board required them to pay more than $800,000 to enclose parts of the terrace, which the Weinrebs say they are entitled to use but the co-op says they are not; consequently, the Weinrebs brought their suit.

According to the board, though, the Weinrebs never submitted final plans; the board maintains it had been reviewing and commenting on incomplete plans all along in order to help save the Weinrebs time and money in creating the final drawings and specifications, an accommodation “that the board has not extended to any other tenant,” Raymond Fitzgerald, representing the board, wrote to the Weinrebs’ lawyer. But in the board’s view, according to court papers, the project would take valuable assets like development rights and common areas, for which the co-op should be compensated.

“This has been a long and difficult process for all concerned,” Mr. Fitzgerald wrote, “primarily because of the ambitious proposals for renovation that your clients have made.”

It may fall to the courts to determine whose version is right; Justice Edmead has ordered the parties to meet next month.

Correction: September 2, 2011

An article on Tuesday about a penthouse at 37 Riverside Drive that was once the home of Robert A. and Kathleen Durst referred incompletely in some editions to Rabbi Joel S. Goor’s ownership of it. Though he did eventually sell the home, he lived there full time for more than two decades. It is not the case that it was never his permanent home.

A version of this article appears in print on August 30, 2011, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: A Peaceful Penthouse That Turmoil Calls Home. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe